Executive Summary of the paper on “Social Exclusion, Poverty and Perpetuating Inequalities in India– A Political Perspective”

Introductory Part

In a country as India, the largest democracy driven by populism, 'public policy making' warrants a phenomenological construction instead empirical. I see a class and caste fragmented society governed by populist public policy (which does not recognize the Social dimensions of the society). There exists incongruousness between the 'Constitutional State' and 'Civil Society'. This incongruence is apparently felt in the ineffectiveness of the implementation of Social Equity Policies of State. As a result social exclusion in India has been a continuous space for discussion right from the point of origin of political empowerment in India to the present day. The paper sets forth to describe the relationship between social exclusion and poverty, the situation of social exclusion and tries to explain the emancipation of first generation Dalits (the untouchables) who attain elitism surpassing the barricades of social exclusion and the related obstacles taking inferential references from a couple of case studies. The paper has been constructed upon a multi disciplinary approach including public policy, sociology, psychology and development economics.

Statement of the Problem

I advocate that poverty in rural India is complementary to Social Exclusion (Undoubtedly there are upper caste people who are poor, but their percentage is very marginal when compared to the Dalits (untouchable castes). Also the striking difference is that the inbuilt system of intra social networking of dalits is very minimal[1] when compared to non-dalits, which helps the non-dalits to climb up the class ladder (There are numerous examples). Thus poverty of Dalits has a concrete relationship with the degree of Social Exclusion. Despite their legitimate aspirations of right to education, right to livelihood, there are cases where Dalit children do not go to school for their free noon meal (the only attraction for their parents to send their kids to school), because of the indifferent treatment meted out to them. These social stigmas are well accommodated and arranged within the social system, that opposition and resistance to such indifferences is conveniently ruled out and could be understood within the domain of “Poverty and Aspiration Failures”. We also cannot forget that these Dalits are those who come within the bell jar of ‘State Monitoring’, but there are millions trapped in jungles as tribes[2] ( though constitutionally demarcated as belonging to the Fifth Scheduled provinces of India, the tribals do not figure anywhere in the social mapping of India), are completely outside the scope of State intervention.

With the above as the setting, and to measure the degree of social exclusion and related poverty, I have identified three categories[3] of socially excluded Dalit population:

1. Those who are continuously put to perils without improvement of their status ( E.g. Project Affected Families with inadequate Rehabilitation and Resettlement Packages not addressing the social dimension of Rehabilitation and Resettlement, the rat eating societies of western Bihar in India, and the tribals divorced from the mainstream) – (Socially and Politically excluded group)

2. Those who are accessible to economic packages of the State and still cannot move beyond and remain static, due to social conditions ( E.g. those people trapped in rural pockets of dominant feudalistic Caste Hindu Societies such as the Pappapatti, Keeripatti Villages[4] of Southern India) – socially excluded and partly politically excluded group

3. Those who move up the ladder making use of affirmative actions of the State ( E.g., The legislators who are selected to the , Local Self Government, Provincial Legislative Assemblies and Parliament ( Political Empowerment) and he successful Civil Servants and persons in select elitist academic institutions. )- Socially excluded but having access to State’s affirmative actions)

I have chosen the third category and tried to answer a crucial question, “if this Social Exclusion is so abominable, then how come Dalits from rural societies attain empowerment through affirmative policies of the State and become Civil Servants, technocrats?”

Though the leverage provided by the State by way of schools have helped the individuals for the upward movement, despite the opposing current of social barricades, the sum total of the affirmative action could not help any one beyond a point (say the ‘optimal point of leverage’), and it is sheer motivation (as enunciated by Abram Maslow in his hierarchy of needs), the achievers move beyond and the learned helplessness is thoroughly overcome. They some times become role models. But this should never mean that only self actualized Dalits can become elites as what I demonstrated applies only for understanding ‘emancipation of first generation Dalits towards elitism[5] ).

Delimitation:

I am delimiting the term Social Exclusion to rural societies and not urban, where the premises are quite different than rural situations.

Scope for further studies

Identifying the specific indicators of motivation of achievers moving beyond the yoke of social exclusion, the factors that synchronize political participation and social inclusion, those indicators for the optimal harnessing of affirmative actions by the state by an individual, the specific indicators responsible for social exclusion in urban societies especially are some of the vital areas of further studies.

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[1] It is peculiar in India, that the Dalits have numerous leaders with their own groups, in the same political space. Except rationalizing that they form a part of “Political Articulation”, no other valid arguments can support the fragmentation.

[2] A lot of debate is centred whether to leave them be in the Jungle and not bring them to the main stream or to bring them to the mainstream politics as an act of social and political inclusiveness enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

[3] The three categories are not universal models. But micro models created to understand the degree of social exclusion and poverty so as to quantify the data. Identifying the indicators of social exclusion is underway.

[4] These villages with dominant caste population never allowed the Dalits from contesting for elections for decades.

[5] The sad part is that the neo-elites mostly become “interest groups” and they get them selves divorced from Dalit identity itself seldom bother about lending a leverage to other Dalits, which is apparent with Elite Dalits, when compared to the group behavior of other upper castes( this part is not within the scope of this paper) and attain sanctity in accordance to M.N Srinivas’s ‘theory of sancrtisation’.

(Abstract of my Oral presentation to be presented in 54^th Congress of Indian Political Science Association, Lucknow University, Lucknow scheduled to be held from 28^th to 30^th December 2011)